Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

ANTHONY

“You really let your mother plan the wedding?” Rosie asks, hours later, waving a peanut at me. It’s her twelfth. Yes, I’ve counted. I’ve also watched each nut pass through her lips.

“Like I told you, she got married three times. I figured she was some kind of expert.”

She narrows her gaze at me. “You didn’t answer me before. What happened to the guys?”

I stare back at her, not entirely sure she’s not messing with me. “You honestly don’t know? It’s all anyone around here seems to talk about.”

“Believe it or not, you and your family have not been a topic of great interest to me.”

I laugh, the opposite of offended, because I’ve never enjoyed the scrutiny, the whispers, and the knowing glances. A lack of interest is the greatest gift she could give me.

“I wish more people felt that way.”

“You still haven’t answered,” she points out.

“They’re dead. All three of them. There’s this rumor running around town that my mother’s a black widow.”

“Is she?” she asks, perking up—interested now, although in my mother, not in me.

“No,” I say with a rough laugh. But I’m not amused anymore, not really. This will never be a subject I enjoy talking about, nor one I can take lightly. “Her first husband got struck by lightning—”

“He didn’t,” she says with a gasp, her hand rising to her chest. “You’re fucking with me. You have to be.”

Genuine laughter escapes me. “I assure you, I’m not. It was on the news. And her third husband died in a plane crash.”

Her mouth drops open, a perfect, pretty ‘oh’ of surprise.

I smile wryly. “My mother’s crafty, but it would be a stretch to credit her with controlling the weather or causing a plane to crash.”

“She’s unlucky in love,” she says, repeating what I said earlier, shaking her head as if in commiseration. “The statistics are skewed against her.”

“Yes,” I agree.

“I feel like that sometimes too. Roman’s not the first married man I’ve unknowingly dated. Will you believe it’s happened twice? The first one hurt the worst, but I really felt cursed when it happened again. It’s like I’m wearing some invisible sign that only assholes see.”

I see her, but then again maybe I’m an asshole too, in a different way, so I feel no need to point it out. “My mother’s three husbands all died in strange accidents. There’s a lot I’ll believe.”

“And what happened to your father?”

There’s a sudden vise around my throat, but I speak through it. “An accident in our yard. He fell from an apple tree and broke his neck. They say it was instant.”

She shakes her head again. I hear the silent unlucky . Cursed .

My whole life, I’ve heard those words spoken, hinted, implied…I can’t escape them, so I’ve decided not to care about them. It’s an approach that I’ve applied to too much of my life, probably.

Don’t like it? Tuck it away and never look at it.

“You can throw salt over your shoulder if you want,” I say with a smile. “People have been known to do that in our presence. The kids in my class used to dare each other to go on a date with my sister. See if she was a black widow too.”

“Fuck them,” she says with animation, and my smile grows wider. She’s a woman who feels things strongly and wears those feelings out in the open. I like that about her, even though I’ve lived my life in the opposite way. “I hope you gave them a lesson.”

“I did, and my sister tricked me into glitter-bombing my own bedroom as punishment. She believes in fighting her own battles. A little like you, I’m guessing.”

Her lips lift up. “You’ve got that right.”

“Do you want the salt now? Maybe some sage?”

She blows out a breath that makes a few strands of hair hanging from her ponytail waft out, and I find myself reaching over to tuck them behind her ear. Her hair is soft against my fingers, like spider silk.

She smiles at me, her eyes widening slightly. “If something so simple could cure bad luck, then I would have won the lottery years ago. So you figured your mother was some kind of wedding expert?”

I shrug, my fingers tingling slightly from the contact with her skin and her spun gold hair. “Maybe. I don’t care about any of that stuff. The pomp, the circumstance. It’s all a bunch of showboating. I figured it would give Nina a chance to bond with my mom, but she basically let Mom do whatever she wanted. The only thing she cared about was the money. That’s obvious now.”

She snorts. “Should have been obvious when she suggested you get married the second you told her about your trust fund.”

We’ve been at the bar for a long time now, and other than an older man with a sunburned pate, who’s always here and may have actually fallen asleep in the booth closest to the door, we’re the only customers left. It’s unclear whether the bartender cares or has any plans to close the place down.

I don’t want him to. I don’t know why, but all I really want to do right now is sit across from this woman. She’s easy to talk to, and we’ve spent half our time talking about nothing and the other half discussing our personal horror stories. She told me about discovering her ex-boyfriend’s picture-perfect family, and I spilled the details of my sorry story:

Meeting Nina, thinking she was different.

Confessing to Nina that I was from a wealthy family and would be very wealthy if I found someone to marry before I turned thirty-four.

Agreeing to marry Nina when she enthusiastically offered.

Realizing Nina was exactly the same as the other woman who’d used me for my father’s fortune…

Through it all, Rosie listened intently.

Now, she makes an amused sound, not quite a laugh, then says, “You know, I’ve heard your mother designed a real horror-show of a wedding for you.”

My mouth lifts. “I don’t even know the half of it. Like I said, I stayed out of it. She made the arrangements as terrible as possible because she was trying to get a reaction from Nina.” I pause, but a few too many beers has me admitting, “My mother hasn’t cancelled it yet. She’s told everyone it’s going to be a New Year’s party now, but the arrangements are still in place.”

“Seriously?” she says, leaning forward, her whole countenance buzzing with life. She’s so invested in my ridiculous life story, I can’t help but laugh again.

“Seriously. She says she’s only doing it to be supportive, but I expect she wants it to go forward because it would be a real slap in the face for Nina.”

“It would be,” she says, her eyes sparkling with wicked amusement, “if you use her wedding to marry another woman. Would you invite her and your traitor friend? Tell them it’s a New Year’s party, and whoops, it’s a wedding after all? You could cross out her name on all of the favors and sub in the bride’s name.”

I shrug. “Maybe. Jake suggested it too. But I figure I’d better find someone to marry before I get ahead of myself. As my mother keeps reminding me, I’m running out of time. New Year’s is less than three weeks away.”

She watches me for a second, dozens of things dancing in her blue eyes, and for a moment I’m transfixed by them. By her. I’ve never met anyone this alive before. Maybe I’m drunk, but it seems to me that she could hardly help but animate everything she touches.

“I really want to see that happen,” she finally says. “I want to see the look on her face when she realizes her wedding has been coopted.” Another second of silence passes before she says, “I’m going to find you a wife.” Then she smacks the table open-handed. The booths all have low backs except for the two closest to the bathroom, presumably there for shady business deals, so I can see Sunburned-Pate Guy flinch awake. He makes a startled sound before recognizing where he is and settling back in for dreams of sugarplums and warmer climates.

My lips twitch with amusement. “I don’t want to double-dip.” Rosie starts to laugh, clearly amused by this phrase, and I add, “Jake set up a meeting for me this weekend. An accountant.”

Her lips press together. “He’s going about this all wrong.”

Bemused laughter bursts from me again. “Why’s that?”

She gives me an assessing look, her eyes a little glazed, and I realize we’ve each had four or maybe five beers. More than enough that I’ll have to call a town car and bear the indignity of coming back in the morning to retrieve my car. “Mark my words, you are for a female accountant what a sample sale is for rich white ladies. She’s going to be all over you.”

I’m oddly offended by this. Maybe because Rosie is nothing like what I’d imagine an accountant might be, so it’s as if she’s saying I’m very resistible for her.

“Care to make a wager?” I ask before I can stop myself.

New energy seems to zip around inside of her, as if this mention of a wager is feeding some unseen hunger, and I feel…

I feel something again.

I’m definitely not bored. I haven’t been bored this entire evening.

“What kind of wager?” she asks, her eyes lighting up.

“If this meeting goes south on Saturday, then I’ll let you find someone for me. But if it goes well, then I get to find someone for you .”

I’m not sure what possessed me to say that. Most of my friends are married or happily coupled-up, and my one habitually single friend is now banging my ex-fiancée. Besides, I don’t like the idea of setting Rosie up with anyone. Maybe it’s because I have trouble imagining anyone who’d be able to keep up with her, and I don’t want her to be bored either.

But she gives me a broad grin and holds out her hand. I take it, feeling a surprising stirring inside of me, but I ignore it and give her a firm but gentle shake. My father always said you could take the measure of a man through his handshake, and he used to make me practice it with him—squeezing my small bones until they ground together, because being a man also meant taking a hit and not letting it show.

“I’m going to win,” she says, her eyes bright with the prospect. “I always win wagers.”

“I believe you. Something tells me you have a victory dance too.”

“ Of course I do. It’s obscene.”

I can’t not smile at that.

“Do I get to tell Jake about the competition?”

“You should,” I say. “A man should know what he’s up against.”

Sunburned Pate stirs again, scratches his pink head, and glances at the TV. The gameshow that was on earlier has slid into paid programming, but the bartender is still watching it with sulky, glazed disinterest. It hits me that even though I’ve been here a lot over the last several months, I’ve never thought to ask for his name.

“I need to go talk to that guy about the peanuts,” Rosie says, smacking the table again. “He looks like a man who’s about to give me a deal counter to his interests.”

I wonder if that’s what I looked like to her too.

But, for the life of me, I can’t think of what Rosie James would stand to gain by helping me find a wife before the end of December.

“Would you like a ride home?” I ask. “I’m going to call a town car.”

Her face crinkles with amusement. “Why don’t we take an uber together?”

I’m already shaking my head. “The last uber driver in Marshall turned out to be a murderer. I’d prefer it if you took a town car.”

“Neither of us live in Marshall,” she says, rolling her eyes. I guess she has a point, but it’s where my mother and her brother live, and it’s kind of hard to forget a thing like that. “And you should come with me if you’re so desperately worried,” she finishes, totally unfazed by my reference to the murderer. Too bad—I’d thought that was my ace in the hole.

“Why don’t you want to take a town car?” I ask. Truthfully, I’m a lot less worried about getting picked up by a murderer than someone whose car smells like unwashed feet, or perhaps the pot-smoking son of someone on my board, but I don’t need to tell her that.

She gives me an amused look. “Because I want to see you in an uber. But first I’m going to get myself a deal on some peanuts.”

She gets up and sidles over to the bar, where the bartender slowly animates—as if he could hardly help himself with Rosie close. And even though this is a matter between her and the stoner bartender and is arguably none of my business, I find myself getting up and following her. Like I could hardly help it either.

Ten minutes later, the bartender, Dominic—“Dom”—is her best friend. Five minutes later, he’s telling us all about his dead-end job at the bar we’ve been at all evening.

He says the owner wouldn’t let him decorate the bar with nutcrackers and a tree-nut medley for Christmas. I guess he was worried about the possible liability issues of having a bunch of drunk people around nutcrackers. According to Dom, the building is also owned by a “slumlord,” an accusation I listen to with tongue in cheek, because here’s the truth…

I own this building.

I own it, not my father’s company. I bought it several years ago with some money I’d earned from my savings and investments, because I’d looked at it and seen not what it was but what it could become. In my mind, it was something special—a community, a haven, a home .

But my life is nothing if not a story of stalled potential. I allowed the bar to stay, and the rest of the building houses nothing but rats and stored building materials for some of the builders we work with. My dream is a warehouse full of other peoples’ building supplies.

“What about a ladies’ night?” Rosie asks, glancing around as if she, too, is taking in the potential and ignoring the blaring lack of charm, from the spiderwebs in the rafters to the slight unwashed funk that might be from the bar itself or the man who tends it. “Have you ever tried one of those?”

“You think women would come here ?” he asks in awe, as if he’s not talking to one of the most naturally gorgeous women I’ve ever seen. Still, there’s no denying he has a point. I don’t think women would come here—mostly because Rosie is one of the only women I’ve ever seen in here.

“If you offer half-priced drinks on a weeknight, they will,” she says with a wink. “People will do a lot for a half-priced drink.” She gives the place another glance, this one absorbing the obvious deficits. “Maybe give it a little lift, though. Women like pretty things.” Her eyes light up. “Ooh, you could give away some kind of swag with the bar’s name on it. That always works well at parties, and they can share whatever you put out with their friends. You know, spread the word. Why don’t you give me your number, and I can help you build some buzz. Our friend Jake kicks ass at design, so I’m sure he could sketch up a logo for you.”

Both Dom and I are gaping at her now.

“ You want my number?” he asks, his blood-shot eyes widening.

“Of course,” she says, “we’re friends, aren’t we? I’m going to help you. And when ladies’ night is a huge success, maybe the owner will be willing to take some more unconventional risks.” She winks at him, and he looks like he’s on the verge of passing out.

Her gaze shifts to me for a half a second. She gives me a sly, knowing grin, then glances back at Dom, “Hey, where do you get the peanuts? These are the best peanuts I’ve ever had in my life…so crunchy and delicious…and my friend needs to acquire some for this event she’s holding.”

“How many do you need?” he asks without hesitation. “Whatever you want, they’re yours. On the house.”

I stare at Rosie James with awe.

For years, I’ve struggled to win the loyalty of the people who work for me, most of whom have been there long enough that they worked for my father. All of whom see him as some sort of God of real estate investment. Me, not so much. Hell, last year, my HR rep informed me bluntly that morale was low and convinced me to hold a team-building exercise at a retreat in the mountains.

No one caught me in the trust fall.

I’m too closed off, I’ve been told. Cold. Reserved. Dead inside , according to Nina and probably the vast majority of the people I’ve met.

But it took Rosie all of fifteen minutes to win this bartender over so thoroughly that he gave her exactly what she wanted. Only…

She gave him something too. She made him feel special and important. Motivated . Because from the look on his face, this stoner is going to be holding a ladies’ night within the week, come hell or high water, if only to impress her.

“Thank you,” Dom says. “ Thank you .” Turning to me, he shakes his head, bemused, and says, “You’re one lucky man, brother.”

I nearly snort. “One lucky slumlord.”

His gaze shifts to me, and he opens his mouth to say something, but Rosie, who has the instincts of a cat, reaches across the bar and gives him an honest-to-God hug. He hugs her back a little too tightly, and I find myself fisting my hands.

Dom must notice, because he pulls back so abruptly he nearly staggers into the shelves behind the bar.

“Sorry, sorry. I’m just so excited. This is going to be…this is going to be the bomb. This town won’t know what hit it.”

“That’s the spirit,” Rosie says encouragingly. She pulls out a package of strawberry gum and offers it to both of us before taking a piece herself and tucking it away.

All I can do is gape at her.

Dom gapes at her through two pieces of strawberry gum.

Five minutes later, Rosie and I are sliding into an old car that smells like locker room shoes but has battery-powered Christmas lights stapled above the windows as an unwelcome reminder that the holidays are marching ever closer. She’s clutching a sack full of Dom’s nuts.

Rosie gives me a victorious look as the driver, a man who looks like he last showered in May, takes off from the curb. My nose twitches from the stench, and her expression turns even more self-satisfied.

“What’s that look for?” I ask as the car glides through the streets. “Because you got Dom to give you the nuts for free? I’ll admit to being mildly impressed. I wish I were half as good at working people. Things would go more easily for me at the office.”

She reaches over and pokes my chest, her finger lingering for a second longer than it needs to, a look cresting in her eyes before disappearing. “Hey, I didn’t ‘work’ anything. I like Dom, and he really does have a shitty job.” She arches her eyebrows. “And a shitty landlord.”

“So you picked up on that…” I say with a snort. “I’ll have you know I’m a very responsive landlord. The last I checked it’s not my duty to clean the floors for them.”

She laughs, her eyes bright with it, even in the near dark of the interior of the uber as it navigates the dim streets of Asheville. “Is it weird that I like the thought of you scrubbing floors?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t savor the thought of you doing menial tasks. But I can assure you that I have scrubbed floors before. It was my mother’s favorite punishment.”

She shakes her head in amusement. “What’d you do? Break a priceless dish? Get a B-?”

A smile slips through, and I shake my head right back at her. “If you grew up in a house like that, wouldn’t you try to throw a few inadvisable parties?”

She grins. “Hell, yeah. Give it to me up here.”

She lifts her hand for a high five, and I laugh. “I’m not giving you a high five. We’re not thirteen-year-olds.”

She blows a strawberry bubble and pops it. “Speak for yourself. And don’t leave me hanging. It’s rude to leave people hanging.”

Her eyes are sparkling, her lips parted slightly, and again, something stirs in the numbness inside of me. I want to please her. I want to see her smile again. So I lift my hand and slap it against hers, feeling a surprising burst of sensation.

She curls her fingers around mine before letting go, her grin wide and blinding—almost so bright that I have to look away.

“I knew you had it in you,” she says.

“I didn’t know I had it in me,” I mutter.

“Anyway. I feel compelled to point out that I really wasn’t working Dom. People need to vent. They deserve to have someone listen to them.”

My mouth quivers with a withheld smile. “If you like him so much, I should ask him to be your date when you lose our wager.”

She beams. “Look at you, being saucy. Maybe I’ll ask him to be your date when you lose.”

“Alas, he’s not my type.”

“What is your type?” She leans in closer to keep our conversation semi-private. Her leg presses against mine for just a second—a hot, searing second that has blood rushing to places it definitely doesn’t belong. But I’m tipsy, heading toward drunk, and a gorgeous woman is sitting in the backseat of an Uber with me, asking about my type . That’s all this is. I’m not interested in her. I haven’t been interested in anyone or anything, not really, in longer than I can remember. There’ve been glimmers of it—especially when I first bought this building, with its colorful graffiti and vast interior, but those feelings of inspiration, of future joy, always seem to dance out of reach.

I swallow. “Right now, no one. I meant what I said. I’m taking a break from all of that.”

She gives me a dubious look. “From my experience, men don’t like going two days without sex, let alone months.” She glances down at my hand, resting on my thigh. “Then again, you do have big hands. I’ll bet—”

“Your brother might have been right about the muzzle,” I say tersely, my dick feeling every word from her mouth. It’s not a great start to the no-sex desert I’m sprinting toward. Because she’s not wrong. If I manage to find a woman who’ll agree to a legal but fake marriage, neither of us will be able to publicly date for the duration. The thought hadn’t really bothered me before now.

She shrugs. “Oh, I know he was right.” Her gaze lingers on my face for a few seconds before she asks, “You really must have loved your ex, huh? She seemed kind of awful, but who am I to talk? I’ve always had horrible taste in men. You probably would have seen through Roman or those other jerks in half a second. That’s the thing. It’s always easier to see someone else’s relationship problems clearly.”

I consider her words for a moment, because they deserve it, then look out the window and find myself staring at a billboard advertising a therapy business. Touché. Glancing back at her, I say, “Nina was good at pretending to be someone else. If you don’t blame me for not seeing through her, then you can’t blame yourself for the same thing. Some people are great liars. It’s what they do best.”

She leans in and wraps her hand around my arm in a light squeeze before saying, “Ooh, I wasn’t expecting that. You have really nice arms.”

“You thought I’d have subpar arms?” I ask, amused—and also thrown by how pleased I am.

“No…maybe. But thank you. That’s really sweet of you. And I agree, let’s not blame ourselves. It’s one hundred percent their fault.”

I’m smiling at her in the dim light of the car when I realize I didn’t answer her question. It seems important to set things straight, so I say, “Actually, I didn’t love her. Not anymore. I thought I did when we first met, but it turns out I didn’t know her at all.”

She studies me, then says, “And what happened nearly broke you anyway.”

In her voice is something unexpected: understanding.

When Nina left, it had felt like confirmation that the only likable thing about me is my bank account balance and investment portfolio. It made me want to shore up my brick walls. Because what would it have felt like to discover someone I actually loved wanted exactly what all the others had?

I keep looking for meaning, and all I find are empty wells.

Then Rosie does something unexpected. She layers her hand on top of mine and says, “You inherited your father’s business, didn’t you?”

I nod, my vocal cords no longer feeling especially functional. All I manage to get out is: “Smith Investments, yes.”

“And do you like your job?”

I give her the only honest answer I’ve ever made to that question: “No. I loathe it.”

“So what will you do if you get the money? Are you going to say to hell with it all and buy yourself a haunted mansion in Scotland?” Her tone is expectant, buoyant.

I’d ask her why Scotland? or maybe why haunted? but my attention is diverted by the question itself.

Because no, I won’t. I’ll stay at my job. I’ll try to maintain my father’s legacy the way he would have wanted, even though I know nothing I do would ever please him.

But I won’t do it out of love.

The car starts to slow down, and when it rolls to a stop beside Rosie’s building, she gives me a conspiratorial look and says, “Give it some thought. I’ll be thinking about winning our wager.”

She goes for the door handle, but an impulse has me leaning in and reach for it first—like we’re playing a game of capture the flag. She looks over her shoulder, her expression startled but not displeased, and I suddenly realize how much of her space I’ve taken. I’m pressed against her coated back, my hand wrapped around to touch the door. The sweet honey scent of her hair is in my nose. I scoot away on the seat, moving so forcefully I bang my head against one of the lightbulbs on the other side.

“Sorry,” I mutter.

“Kidnapping me would be an extreme way to get out of the wager.” Her gaze is amused now, which is for the best, because the driver has taken a sudden interest in us and is giving me a suspicious look in the rearview mirror.

Maybe I’m like Dom, drawn to Rosie by her charisma, the one thing I’ll never be able to buy, but I know I can’t wait days to talk to her or see her.

“What’s your number?”